My brother did a fine thing when he sent me a link to the corn picker forum, which I never knew existed until then! I love the shelling photos and video. The one on page 8 or so "How about some shelling" with the steam powered Cook sheller is absolutely fantastic!
No more shelling to be done in this area but I'm posting a couple shots of the last time we shelled at my uncle's place, with the '68 GMC. I loved shelling most of the time, but had a few bad jobs where I wished I'd just stayed home!
Thanks guys! It would take whatever you could get into it. I put a Cook cylinder in it shortly after I got it and it would really shell. Unfortunately it's no longer in service. I had too may shellers taking up space in the shed (4 at one time), very few jobs, and had a bunch of trouble with first the water pump and then the radiator on this one. The replacement radiator I put in it turned out to be no good and wouldn't keep the engine cool; we finished the job in the picture by trickling a garden hose down the front of the radiator while shelling and I never used it on another job after that. Eventually an Amish man from up around Manchester wanted the cylinder and cob grinder so I sold those parts to him.
It was a neat sheller to use though; had the big 401 V-6 and sounded great with dual stacks behind the cab and no mufflers.
I've got some more photos that I can post when I get a chance...
Andy
-- Edited by AndyBrown on Thursday 24th of January 2013 07:30:43 AM
You said there was a cob grinder on this sheller (and I can see in the photos that there is an extra "something" that is belt-driven in the area where the cobs come out). How did this work, and for what purpose were the cobs ground as they were coming out of the sheller? Was this a shop-built attachment, or did a short-line company build these "back in the day"? Just something interesting that I have not seen on a sheller before......
-- Edited by jdtom on Tuesday 29th of January 2013 10:45:56 AM
The cob grinder was a large cylinder about 3-4 ft long with approx. 1 inch long straight teeth sticking out in a pattern around the cylinder. The cobs would drop off the shoe into a space between the grinder and a flat plate with corresponding teeth and get ground up (very coarse grind) before dropping into the cob stacker. The flat plate was movable so you could either grind cobs or let them drop straight through, but the cob cylinder turned continously as it was belted directly to the main shaft. I'm not sure if this was a John Deere application or aftermarket add on. I think some farmers liked the cobs ground for bedding maybe? It was fun to grind them but the small chunks would have a tendency to get under the cob stacker chain and cause trouble there.
Back in the old days, the chicken farms around here cribbed their corn and then had it shelled after it had dried enough. They all used the ground cobs for bedding on the floor (this is before cages).
We farrow gilts/sows out on pasture in A-houses or steel huts. We always loved getting crushed cobs for bedding the huts. When it rained the cobs kept the pigs off the ground. The pigs also stayed cooler with crushed cobs for bedding in the summer. It also seemed that crushed cobs were better than whole cobs because the sow seemed to lay on more baby pigs with whole cobs. We always theorized that the big whole cobs got her used to laying on bumpy bedding so she didn't notice as readily when laying on a baby pig. Unfortunately, no one around here shells corn anymore. In fact, I think Andy bought the parts (cob crusher and others) from the guy that used to shell in this area. This is a very interesting site, I always wrestle with whether I should let my thirst for nostalgia win out over my "common sense" and buy a picker and start cribbing ear corn! Paul
here is a sandwich manufacturing co sandwich il archieve picture of a cylinder sheller powered by a 10 hp sandwich it was taken ona farm just south of sandwich owned by agustus otto who was instrumental in the development of the sandwich easyway hay loader
A few shots of one of my other shellers. The third one shows my dual auger Sudenga rake that would really pull the corn. It almost worked too well as we had to throttle it way down so it wouldn't overload the drag.
Andy
-- Edited by AndyBrown on Monday 4th of February 2013 08:13:33 PM
